Aldermen critical of budget's 911 staff cuts

Hal Dardick, Tribune reporter

The head of the city's 911 center on Monday took aim at what he described as excessive absenteeism in response to critics of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plan to cut the ranks of emergency police and fire call handlers.

Aldermen let Gary Schenkel, executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, know they believed the plan to cut 17 jobs could delay response times and stretch ranks thin.

"It's a very stressful job," said Ald. Mary O'Connor, 41st. "The majority of the cuts were from the front-line workers. And now they are getting burned out."

Along with call takers and dispatchers, the ranks of supervisors also would be reduced — with the number on the fire side slated for a reduction to eight from 12, not counting one vacant position that would remain empty.

"There's going to be less supervisors, so there's going to be more mistakes," Jeff Johnson, a union steward for fire dispatchers, told the Tribune. "You're going to have people working longer shifts, overburdened, overtaxed. And they are going to make mistakes."

But Schenkel said shifts in scheduling, along with more planned overtime and a greater shift of non-emergency calls to 311, would maintain the level of service. "It won't impact safety because we have historical data that will allow us to schedule to the peak periods and peak times that we know historically we get a greater call volume," he said.

Schenkel also decried the absenteeism rate among police and fire call takers and dispatchers, saying it was as high as 15 percent on some days on the police side.

"The industry standard is (that) about 2.5 percent absenteeism is acceptable," he said. "Five percent is a red flag. We are up in some sections as high as 14 and 15 percent. And that is somewhat unacceptable."

But Johnson said he is not clear on how the city calculated the absenteeism rate, saying it is not "excessive." And he questioned the idea of predicting when a certain level of workers will be needed. "You never know when emergencies are going to happen," he said.